STARGAZING SESSION AT QUEZON CITY SCIENCE HIGH SCHOOL

October 25-26, 2003

by James Kevin Ty 

Last November 28, some members of ALP were invited to Quezon City Science High School (QCSHS) to stage a stargazing session to more than 400 students at their school field. ALPers also brought along their telescopes to share the sky with the students.

Alice Villa-Real brought along her Nexstar 5 and her new toy, an Orion ST80 refractor; James brought along his ever reliable TV-101 refractor on GP-DX mount; Allen Yu with his 4" Vixen reflector on CG-3 mount plus his trusty 6" dobsonian reflector ; Dr. Jett Aguilar brought his Nexstar 5i and AT1010 refractor on telepod mount; Henry So with his Starmax 127 on EQ-3 mount ; Edward Tan with his Orion XT6 dobsonian reflector. Rich Pijuan together with some Crossroads 77 staff also helped out at the site.

The event started at around 8:00pm with ALPers showing first the Quarter Moon through some pesky clouds. The students make a queue to the 8 scopes brought along by ALPers and were fascinated with the view of the Moon. Since there were 8 scopes to serve the students, there were no long lines so they had ample time to view the Moon to their satisfaction. Afterwards, Mars was then introduced to the students. Although the view of Mars was unsatisfactory due to its small disk, they were still excited to see the red planet.

Then clouds started to cover up the entire sky, so we all have a break during those times........ At around 10:30pm, Saturn then peeked out of the clouds for us to point to the ringed planet. This is the stuff that made the student awed with joy and excitement as most of them had their first view of the ringed planet. Some students jumped up and down after viewing this planet.

Then Alice started to point his ST80 to M45, the Pleiades star cluster, and also showed them its beauty. Other objects that were also observed were M42, and Sirius. They would have some more objects to the students but due to cloudy skies, they were limited to only a few objects :( Although the sky hamper the views most of the night, the students, parents and teachers were quite satisfied with the stargazing session the ALPers had brought to them and they were already looking foward to having another session next year with ALP :)

 Back   

For Comments administrator@astroleaguephils.org